Maddy Samaddar

“PLANETARY COALITION” – FULL ALBUM (HD)

Alex Skolnick's Planetary Coalition

Here it is! A full album-excerpts video, which helps visualize the regions covered by the varied musical styles and instruments, and gives a glimpse of the musicians during the recording process.

“It started with a lone, handwritten sentence on a notepad, describing a musical vision: “An ethnically flavored collective of musicians from all over the world, driven by acoustic guitar and bringing together inspirational melodies, in-depth improvisation and the passion of the musical styles of Gypsy, Middle Eastern, Indian, Latin, East Asian, Mediterranean, Balkan/Eastern European, African and other indigenous lands.”

“The reality: coordinating over two-dozen musicians from five continents.”

“Yet despite the numerous logistical challenges, Planetary Coalition has been guided by a single hope: that by weaving the threads that connect musical expressions with regional identities, we can bridge the gap between diverse cultures and people, and increase awareness of the ecological and social issues facing the planet, our island in the sky.” – Alex Skolnick

Video compiled and edited by Maddy Samaddar (NOMAD 9 DESIGN)


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Extended Excerpt of “Playa la Ropa” with Alex, Rodrigo y Gabriela

The following link will take you to a video we posted on our Facebook Fan page following Cinco de Mayo.

https://www.facebook.com/PlanetaryCoalition/videos/817874134933900/

Be sure to watch in HD setting!

You can also view the video by clicking on the photo below.

An extended video excerpt of “Playa la Ropa” – a high energy guitar trio featuring Alex with dynamic Mexican guitar duo and animal rights’ supporters and activists Rodrigo y Gabriela.

Alex Skolnick, Rodrigo y Gabriela

Audio – Playa La Ropa – composed by Alex Skolnick
Steel String Guitar – Alex Skolnick.
Nylon String Guitars: Rodrigo Sanchez & Gabriela Quintero.
1st & 3rd solo – Rodrigo.
2nd & 4th solo – Alex.
Chords & Percussive Guitar – Gabriela.

Video – filmed and edited by Maddy Samaddar.

This is NOT a full Playa La Ropa official video. It is only an extended excerpt for our fan page. A video featuring the complete song may be created in the future.


Album Excerpts and Preview Part 3 – tracks 10 to 14

This is the last of the album excerpts’ series for Planetary Coalition – with glimpses of the last 5 songs on the album. On Novermber 25, 2014, our itunes sales commenced and within a day the album had already climbed to the top 20 world music albums at number 13. Please help support the project – the link to buy the album on Amazon is here: http://www.amazon.com/Planetary-Coalition-Alex-Skolnick/dp/B00OTVQ0L4 and on itunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/planetary-coalition/id934930381

This series of excerpts begins with a composition with Cuban influences – with the great Grammy award-winning Cuban percussionist Horacio “el Negro” Hernandezand his daughter Jennifer who co-wrote the piece with Alex.

Following this, both countries of the Holy Land – Israel and Palestine are featured – with renowned Palestinian oud player Adnan Joubran of Le Trio Joubran co-composing a track with Skolnick (a piece with surprises in its full version where the melody takes a rather unexpected turn) followed by a duet with famed Israeli percussionist Gadi Seri (a frequent accompanist in the group of Israeli singing sensation Noa) in a piece inspired by travelling through the Negev desert. Initially both Seri and Joubran were to feature on the same track but, due to different rhythm styles, decided to have two separate pieces.

The fourth excerpt is the first guitar-pipa duet ever performed of a popular Chinese melody – with Skolnick and pipa virtuoso Yihan Chen playing on a variation of Wang Huiran’s tune Dance of the Yi People as “Return of the Yi People” and the colorful landscapes featured in the video are indeed from the region of South China where the Yi people reside. To see the very first meeting of Chen and Skolnick and how they clicked instantly go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G-ymgp5e-8

And finally, an excerpt of the popular signature tune of the project – the very first track which Skolnick had composed in 2012 when he conceived of the Planetary Coalition series: Sleeping Gypsy  which includes visual clips of the dancing crowds in Union Square where he kick-started the project in 2012 and later performed once again in the summer of 2014.

On Saturday November 29, 2014, about seven of the twenty seven musicians of Planetary Coalition will play at the Liberty Science Center coinciding with an exhibition on the history and development of the acoustic and electric guitar.

Album Excerpts and Preview Part 2 – tracks 1 to 4

A short video with glimpses of the first four tracks of the album, including two time Juno-award winning Indian ghazal/folk style as well as classically trained singer Kiran Ahluwalia; also, Turkish kanun player Tamer Pinarbasi along with other members of New York Gypsy All Stars; members of the group Raza Truncka from Salto playing Argentine indigenous drums and members of the Brooklyn-based world music group House of Waters. Stay tuned till the end of the video.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ncMQRiX44

(Photography and videography of the artists in-studio are by Tom Couture and Maddy Samaddar – who has also done the editing and album artwork. A separate page will be put up to list all other images used, including film clips with copyrights, permissions and detailed credits for all the regional, political and landscape photos used in this video.)


 

 

It’s 11/11 and our album has been officially released!

New York, New York, 11/11/2014. Our album is now officially released! This date also marks the centenary celebration to mark the end of World War I.

As we often say here – Make Music, Not War.

We are grateful to all who have contributed, supported and appreciated this project. Please support the arts by getting your copy of the album today and/or spreading the word to your friends and families.  Here’s a sneak peak into some pages from the album. Enjoy!


A glimpse of some of the sounds and textures of Planetary Coalition

This video consists of a few excerpts from live performances giving an idea of the sounds and texture of the music of Planetary Coalition.

Founded by guitarist Alex Skolnick, the group includes a core team of musicians and artists in New York and will include special guests from across the world. The final recording will constitute of other international musicians from various countries, as explained in detail in our Welcome video.

Planetary Coalition will be making its debut recording through ArtistShare® To support this project go to: http://www.artistshare.com/v4/project…

The beautiful artwork and graphics of Planetary Coalition, as well as compilation of its welcome video and others available for purchase on artistshare, is made  by the incredibly talented architect and landscape architect Maddy Samaddar  (of Nomad 9 Design, New York & Open Building Research, Italy,) who has worked on over 80 design projects in 15 countries in five continents. She will also be co-ordinating the project’s artwork and its ecological and environmental aspects. 

Thank you for your interest and we hope you’ll join us in this process, and on this musical journey with Alex Skolnick and his musical guests.

As described in our welcome video, you can contribute through your ideas, essays, artwork, photos, postcards as well. An address will be placed soon for receiving mail on this site.

For those who want to help fund the project through small or large contributions go to: http://www.artistshare.com/v4/projects/experience/325/439/1/6

Planetary Coalition: a world music project by Alex Skolnick. An artistshare fan-funded project. (Artwork of this poster  © 2013 Maddy Samaddar Nomad 9 Design.

Planetary Coalition: a world music project by Alex Skolnick. An artistshare fan-funded project. (Artwork  © 2013 Maddy Samaddar Nomad 9 Design.)

It’s on!

Planetary Coalition’s Welcome video is up at ArtsistShare as we officially kickstart the process to get closer to recording a CD in the near future.

Here is the video explaining the project and its ideas, goals and principles in depth.

To go directly to ArtistShare’s Planetary Coalition project page, and to become a part of the process to make this happen or share with your friends, go to: http://www.artistshare.com/v4/projects/experience/325/439/1/6

Join us!

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Graphics for the video was handled by http://www.nomad9design.com/ Check out their work!